Business by Design this month focuses on a new study that downplays the impact that big box stores have on design professionals.

THIS MONTH:
+ Big Concerns, but No Big Deal
+ Supersize Your Sales
+ Magic Carpet Ride

Big Concerns, but No Big Deal
If there is one thing that design professionals love to hate, it's the home improvement center.

At recent speaking engagements throughout the U.S. and Canada, I've heard designers, kitchen and bath specialists, decorators, retailers and others bellyache about big box stores.

No question that box stores are, well, big. Over 22 million people each week visit Home Depot stores, whose collective annual sales total over $50 billion.

But a survey of consumer buying habits by Springs Window Fashions LP suggests that design professionals need not worry about the Home Depots of the world.

Its poll of more than 3000 consumers found that only about a third of them buy window treatments at home improvement centers.

In contrast, 46 per cent of the buyers shop at outlets offering "expert help with styles and fit," and/or "quality, variety, and unique types."

Price is only one of several "market drivers" identified by the report. Among the others: "desire for a 'specific' look, personalization, a need for expert help, convenience, and brand."

The survey concludes that the $58.5 billion retail window treatment market holds outstanding potential for independent professionals.

"Your competition is not the big box," the survey advises designers, decorators, and retailers. "Your primary customers don't shop there."

Supersize Your Sales
Summer is a good time to look back -- and look ahead.

Now that we've reached the midpoint of 2004, are you where you want to be? Are you closing the number of sales, and earning the kind of income that you want and deserve?

If not, what are you doing to do about it?

Here's one thing you can do about it: invest in a new training system designed to double your sales and income.

The Superstar Selling System, a set of two audio CD's and a workbook, provides you with what you need to know to adopt selling strategies of the world's most successful design professionals, overcome price objections, upsell more clients more often, turn single sales into long term relationships, avoid the Terrible Ten Selling Sins of Design Professionals...and much more.

The average sales professional spends 39 percent of his/her time in the car. Why not make the best use of your time by learning a selling system that will dramatically improve your bottom line?

The Superstar Selling System for Design Professionals is available for $299, plus $10 for shipping and handling. To order, call toll free: 888-665-5505.

Magic Carpet Ride
Home Depot claims to have sold enough carpeting last year to pave a two-lane road from Atlanta to Los Angeles to New York City, and back to Atlanta.